Zimbabwe: White Farmers who lost their land might be compensated!

[So the new President of Zimbabwe, Mnangagwa, has said that white farmers will NOT get their land back. But now it seems there’s talk of compensation! They will pay the white farmers for the farms that were stolen from them? Now where did that come from? I see some white farmers went to sue the Govt for $9 billion!

I saw today that Morgan Tsvangirai who had been the main opposition to Mugabe, died today of cancer. A very eventful day. This on the same day that Zuma resigned.

Some weird things have been happening here in southern Africa. I wonder if the USA is busy? Whatever has happened, I repeat what I have said before: Politics only moves forward on the basis of FORCE. See my video on POWER POLITICS. If you don’t have power, you don’t go anywhere. Jan]

Harare – The Zimbabwean government has reportedly set up a committee that will spearhead the process of compensating white farmers whose farms where seized during the country’s controversial land reform programme.

According to Daily News, President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s administration appointed the permanent secretary of the land and agriculture ministry, Ringson Chitsiko, to chair the committee until October next year.

The report said that the appointment of Chitsiko was seen as “signalling the commencement of efforts to make agricultural production attractive again” in the southern African country.

The development came just a few weeks after some of the evicted white farmers demanded a $9bn pay-out for assets expropriated during the land redistribution programme.

The Financial Gazette, quoted sources as saying that the compensation claim had since been tabled before President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

The figure included land, which the farmers valued using regional rates, as well as fixed assets, the report said.

Zimbabwe embarked on a violent land reform programme in 2000, taking over white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks.

Thousands of white farmers were forced off their land by mobs or evicted, with ex-president Robert Mugabe saying the reforms would help black people marginalised under British colonial rule.

Critics blamed the land redistribution for the collapse in agricultural production that saw the former regional breadbasket become a perennial food importer.

The Daily News reported that close to 690 000 hectares of land were forcibly taken from the white farmers, including farming equipment, livestock and personal possessions.